The work of visual artist Michiel Huijben (NL, 1985) centers around architecture. His writing, performances and installations depart from, draw on, or intervene in built environments to voice unspoken narratives and conjure speculative legacies. He holds a BFA from St. Joost Academy in Breda, and an MFA from Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2013, he completed a short-track residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, followed by an MA in Architectural History & Theory at the Cass, London. Shortly afterward, he founded the publishing project Flat i (welcometoflat-i.net). In recent years, his work has been presented at a.o. Kunstinstituut Melly and Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam; De Appel, Amsterdam; Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp; Matt's Gallery, London and Kunsthalle Basel and Ausstellungsraum Klingental in Basel, among other institutions. He lives and works in Rotterdam, where he is a tutor in artistic research at the Willem de Kooning Academy.
States of place (2021) - This two-screen video essay is a reflection on changes in the design and use of post-war public space in the Netherlands and how archives remember these. The Open Archief project was an invitation to work with the brilliant archives of Het Nieuwe Instituut, the International Institute for Social History and the National Sound and Vision archives.
Exhibited at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
The Matter of Metaphors (2019) - In ancient Mesopotamia, around 4000 years BC, ziggurats were built as residences for the gods. To this day, this building form is copied again and again for use in both residential and commercial architecture.
This talk draws a line between one of the oldest building forms known to man, the Mesopotamian ziggurat, and a 1998 office building built for the US consumer finance company The Money Store. Using this building as protagonist, this talk tells the story of how one Hollywood director’s supposed infatuation with ancient powers raised questions about architecture, history and metaphor and their significance in practices of real estate, spatial politics and commerce.
Shown at Kunsthalle Basel, CCS Paris and die Angewandte, Vienna
What exists is good (2017-18) - In 'What exists is good', I wanted to question my understanding of contemporary architecture and the city through the closer study of a selection of building materials found in and around my studio and home. These materials are reconsidered and become related to childhood memories - in a way looking at the enduring material presence of my own memories, while at the same time trying to implicate myself into the more recent architectural history of the 1970s onward.
Exhibited at De Appel, Amsterdam and W-O-L-K-E, Brussels
How small a thought (2020) - The video work How Small a Thought has its starting point in a door handle designed in 1927 by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein for his sister Margaret's house. In this video, the handle's asymmetrical form serves as a starting point and stimulus for reflections on the relationships between thinking and doing, and language and images.
Exhibited at Kunstraum Klingental, Basel
Building Histories: Act One (2020) - This installation and performance in two parts started from a commission to conduct research into the institution's building's history. With the late nineteenth century debate around an ‘official’ national style as a backdrop, the work searches for traces of human decision-making across the histories of the building's design, its different uses, and the wider city environment. This juncture is explored in two acts.
Act One departs from the specificities of the building’s exterior. Beginning with ornamental sculptures 3D-scanned from the institution’s façade, the story builds to pan outward into the surrounding city via other examples of nineteenth century architecture in Rotterdam. These ornaments could be considered characters, sculptures, or simply extras in the debate around a national architectural style. These pieces are handled at different moments in a live performance; in the installation, a video presents the performance rehearsal.
Exhibited at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam
M=Fxr (2020) - A work made for my old high school, the Mgr. Frencken College, to commemorate the old, now-demolished building, built in 1961 by the autodidact local architect Jos. Bedaux.
The brick was taken from room B204, the old physics classroom. The text describes how, in the year 2000, I was outside this room, awaiting punishment for destroying one of the classroom’s taps. Out of nervousness and frustration, I spent my time scratching the physics formula used to calculate a force’s momentum into this brick. My punishment was to copy three whole chapters from the textbook, by hand, in all caps. The formula I scratched into the brick’s face later turned out to be used wrong, but it contains the last lowercase letters I ever wrote by hand.
If not, not (2017 – ongoing) - In the summer of 2017, I bought a book in a second-hand bookstore in Rotterdam. That evening, on the train to Brussels, I took the book from my bag to read it. When I opened it, I found some small, handwritten letters. These letters, from a man named Jan to his ex-wife, contained, among personal details and stories, a number of descriptions of his own (amateur) architectural designs that span the decades from the early sixties to late nineties.
I am in the process of researching the locations, events and discussions that sparked these designs, as well as the conditions under which the descriptions themselves were written, and visualizing the designs to the best of my ability.
In a presentation that happened in November 2016 at Het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam, I gave an introduction to this project and shared the stories behind a few of these models.
